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This blog showcases the products of a series of urban design studios that will propose comprehensive spatial strategies for shrinking cities at three scales: city, neighborhood, and dwelling. The studios take place at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning and are taught by professor Brent Ryan.

In the past decade the phenomenon of the shrinking city has emerged as a critical urban design problem on a worldwide scale. Shrinking cities across the globe are characterized by extremes of population loss, degradation of the physical fabric, and socioeconomic problems. Conventional design and planning ideologies have proven inadequate. New solutions at the confluence of physical innovation with social and economic  considerations are badly needed.